சனி, 7 ஜூன், 2014

SL Army conducts ‘archaeology’, The Hindu relays ‘history’

[TamilNet, Friday, 06 June 2014, 17:23 GMT]In addition to doing agriculture, industries and tourism, genocidal
Sri Lanka’s occupying Sinhala Army, groomed to set a new paradigm
jointly by Washington, New Delhi, Beijing and the UN, has started
conducting archaeology too in the country of Eezham Tamils. The military
claims ‘exploring and discovering’ a Buddhist site at the locality of
Uruththirapuram Siva temple in Ki’linochchi. Meanwhile, The Hindu last
week relayed a one-sided history projected by Colombo’s High Commission
in New Delhi, on the Buddhist connections of Lanka and Odisha (Orissa),
to envisage new business enterprises. The relay also added on Sita
temple in Nuwara Eliya, a fake promoted into a larger regional myth in
recent times.

In another development, New
Delhi’s ‘Mauryan Empire’ historian Romila Thaper’s student, Gotabaya
Rajapaksa’s schoolmate and Peradeniya University Professor of
Archaeology, Sudharshan Seneviratne will be representing genocidal Sri
Lanka as its new High Commissioner in New Delhi, news leaked in Colombo
media reports said.

* * *

On finding
Buddhist temple ruins at a current Siva temple locality in Ki'linochchi,
genocidal Sri Lanka’s Army website on Wednesday said: “20 Sri Lanka
Light Infantry (SLLI) troops of the 662 Brigade under the Security Force
Headquarters - Kilinochchi (SFHQ-KLN) came across the site lying in
their area of responsibility by accident […] Major General Sudantha
Ranasinghe, Commander, SFHQ-KLN who himself inspected the place,” and
all the hall marks confirm the existence of a Buddhist temple of the
Polonnaruwa period.

“Archaeologists soon after preliminary
investigations have declared the site a sacred archaeological site,
pending further excavations, extensive research and comprehensive
evaluations,” the military website further said.

The SL military
is not ‘accidently’ conducting archaeology, but is engaged as obsession
in maintaining exploration cum antiquities cells in its camps occupying
the country of Eezham Tamils, local people told TamilNet.

The
Uruthirapuram Sivan temple was built in the last century at a site where
a Sivalinga of Pallava style and an Ampaa'l sculpture were found.

However,
Buddhist archaeological sites in the Tamil North and East, or Hindu
archaeological sites in the Sinhala South, are not strange phenomena in
the island. Many Buddhist as well as Hindu archaeological sites have
become churches too in the colonial times.

The Sinhala-Buddhist
State of Sri Lanka, placed at Colombo to succeed the legacy of
colonialism in the island, congenitally doesn’t have a culture to look
at history as history, particularly with the nation of Eezham Tamils and
their country in the island.

The Eezham Tamils don’t militarily
go and demographically claim Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa (a capitol built
by the Cholas), Padaviya, Kurunegala, Kandy, Kotte (Colombo) or the
Dondra Head (the southern most point in the island), citing the presence
of Saiva sites there. Even their traditional pilgrimage to the Adams
Peak and Kathirkaamam has become a humiliating experience in recent
times.

What is genocidal about the ‘archaeology’ of the Sri
Lankan State is the occupying Sinhala military, known for its engagement
in the destruction and desecration of the Saiva temples, declaring
Buddhist archaeological sites, carving out protected military enclaves,
building new Buddhist temples there, bringing in Buddhist clergy,
bringing in settlers and founding new Sinhala-Buddhist settlements and
townships.

In 2010, writing in The Times, British journalist
Jeremy Page encapsulated the whole process as “the army and the
archaeology department.”

In that feature, Jeremy Page cited
Sudharshan Seneviratne, who was at that time cultural advisor and head
of Cultural Fund of Colombo government, for admiring Mahinda Rajapaksa
as a “smart politician.”

The Washington-New Delhi Establishments
that back the Sri Lankan State, particularly its military, as a ‘corner
stone’ for their imperialistic manoeuvrings in the region, expect the
Eezham Tamils to ‘reconcile’ with the naked genocide, accepting it as
new social engineering for ‘multicultural unification’ of the island.

Genocide has many facets and one such is genocide of historicity.

Unless
the historical reality of the two nations and their territories in the
island are conceded, facilitating people to freely reflect on the
legacies of the past without present constrains, viewing and
presentation of history in the island is not going to be history. It
will be only historical genocide of one nation against the other.

But
the interest today is not on people reflecting on history, but creating
a history in which people ‘reconcile’ with genocidal imperialism.

* * *

Last
week The Hindu relayed a history, citing Colombo’s outgoing High
Commissioner in New Delhi, Prasad Kariyavasam, speaking on the Buddhist
relations between Lanka and the Odisha (Orissa) state of India that was
called Kalinga in history.

The occasion was the formation of
Kalinga-Lanka Foundation, which was launched by Kariyavasam and New
Delhi’s former Foreign Secretary, Lalit Mansingh.

The aim was to
encourage investment to exploit the human and mineral resources of the
two regions. There was also mention of scholars, artists, tourists and
pilgrims.

The real aim was isolating Tamil Nadu from the other Indian States on the national question in the island.

Colombo
diplomat’s endeavour is on “developing unique ties with individual
Indian States on the basis of their cultural linkages with the island
nation.” The Hindu said.

“When South Asia and Asia rise, our two
regions that once controlled the sea trade at the time may also rise,”
The Hindu cited the Colombo diplomat.

The Hindu relayed the
history narrated by the Colombo diplomat on Prince Vijaya, the founder
of the Sinhala race, the tooth relic and several Sinhala kings coming
from Kalinga.

According to the same Sinhala Buddhist
historiography, the worst ever conquerors against Sinhala Buddhism, such
as Kalinga Maaga, also had come from Kalinga.

According to
history, Kalinga has also contributed to the formation of the
Tamil-Saivaite Kingdom of Jaffna in the north of the island.

Will
Kalinga-Lanka Foundation will help for that historical legacy too is
the question of Eezham Tamils responding to The Hindu relayed history of
the Colombo diplomat.

* * *

Writing on
the outgoing diplomat, who will be taking up genocidal Sri Lanka’s UN
ambassador post in New York, The Hindu said that he had also facilitated
the establishment of a temple to Sita near Nuwara Eliya sponsored by
the Madhya Pradesh government [run by the BJP].

The High
Commission has taken keen interest in participating and providing inputs
to the Sanchi University of Buddhist-Indic Studies in Madhya Pradesh,
The Hindu further said.

The temple of Sita in Sita-Eliya in
Nuwara Eliya is a historical fake, resulting from conflation of words
and myth-formation by a migrant community.

Sita-Eliya simply means the cold plains.

While
promoting genocidal Buddhism against Eezham Tamils on one hand the BJP
need not build fake history for ‘Hindus’ in the region, and The Hindu
need not subtly paint a picture for corporate-imperialistic engineering
bulldozing nations in the region, Tamil activists for alternative
politics commented.

Tamils, in their long history of interaction
with all the major religions of the world (which is unique compared to
any linguistic identity in South Asia), rejected a spiritually and
ideologically corrupt Buddhism at one point of time, in favour of
socially liberating Saiva and Vaishnava devotional movement. From time
to time, Tamils have also rebelled against Brahmanistic monopoly of
religion. The latest expression could be seen in the driving spirit of
the Dravidian movement and atheist movement in the last century. Such a
civilisation could never ‘reconcile’ with genocidal-military Buddhism
that is now trying to cling on to neo-imperialist aspirations in the
region, including that of ‘Hindutva’.

SL military blocks people from attending protest in Mullaiththeevu

[TamilNet, Thursday, 05 June 2014, 23:05 GMT]Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and Tamil National Peoples Front (TNPF)
politicians joined a protest held in front of the Mullaiththeevu
District Secretariat on Thursday demanding legal hearings into habeas
corpus petitions from the families and relatives of persons, who are
reported missing after the families had handed them over to the
occupying Sri Lankan military during the final days of the genocidal
onslaught on Vanni in May 2009. On Thursday, the Sri Lankan military in
Mullaiththeevu was blocking the kith and kin of the missing persons
from attending the protest, which was led by Ms Ananthy Sasitharan, an
elected councillor of the Northern Provincial Council (NPC) who
represents the voice of the kith and kin of the missing persons.

NPC Councillor from
Mullaiththeevu Mr T. Ravikaran was earlier arrested and brought to the
Mullaiththeevu court by the SL police on the allegation of contempt of
court. He was later released and the venue of the protest was shifted to
the District Secretariat.

On Wednesday, SL military
intelligence operatives had approached the people, offering the families
of the missing persons transport facilities to take part in the protest
on the following day. On Thursday, the people were taken on board the
SL military run buses and were transported to SL military camps, civil
sources told TamilNet.

SL military was blocking
the people at Keappaapulavu and Mu’l’liyava'lai. Those who managed to
reach Mullaiththeevu town were blocked inside their buses by the
occupying SL military.

The families of the missing persons had
filed writs of habeas corpus on behalf of the victims at the Vavuniyaa
High Court. The High Court had instructed the District Court to
commence initial investigations. But, there have been no hearings for
years, the protesters complained.

It has become almost a
practice to indefinitely put off the hearings citing absence of the
lawyers as the SL government wanted to drag the process out, they
further complained.

Ananthi Sasitharan is the wife
of Ezhilan, the former Trincomalee Political Head of the LTTE and a
mother of three girls. She personally witnessed Sri Lanka military
taking away her husband at the end the Vanni War in May 2009.

The
SL State is still refusing to reveal the fate of those who were
filtered away from the civilians and taken into buses to undisclosed
detention camps.

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 04 June 2014, 07:01 GMT]Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Selvi Jayalalithaa, in a memorandum
submitted to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has firmly reiterated
the stand expressed in four Tamil Nadu State Asssembly resolutions,
demanding the Indian government to move a UN resolution demanding
investigations on Tamil genocide and a UN referendum on Tamil Eelam
among the Tamils in the island as well as among those living outside the
island. Selvi Jayalalithaa, who didn’t attend the swearing-in ceremony
due to the controversial invitation extended to SL president Mahinda
Rajapaksa, met Mr Narendra Modi at New Delhi presenting him the demands
of Tamil Nadu in the 25 point memorandum where the genocide
investigation and UN referendum on Tamil Eelam was the second point of
the agenda.

Full text of the second point as formulated in the memorandum follows:

II. SRI LANKAN TAMIL ISSUE

There
are very strong sentiments amongst Tamils and in Tamil Nadu on a range
of issues relating to India’s relations with the present regime in Sri
Lanka in the aftermath of the final stages of the civil war in Sri
Lanka, which was marked by an ethnic pogrom and genocide perpetrated on
the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka. The Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly has
already passed four Resolutions condemning the continuing
discrimination against the Tamil minorities in Sri Lanka and violation
of their human rights.

I request that India should sponsor a
resolution in the United Nations condemning the genocide in Sri Lanka
and to hold to account all those responsible for the genocide and
thereby render justice to the Tamils in Sri Lanka. The resolution should
also provide for holding a Referendum amongst Tamils in Sri Lanka and
displaced Sri Lankan Tamils across the world for formation of a separate
Tamil Eelam.

* * *

While welcoming the
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister who has been consistent in reflecting the
sentiments of the people of Tamil Nadu, Tamil political observes in the
island blamed the elected Eezham Tamil politicians of the Tamil National
Alliance (TNA), other Tamil politicians from the island and in the
diaspora for their grave failure in conveying the sentimental and
political consequences of referring the nation of Eezham Tamils as a ‘minority’ and calling the Eezham Tamils ‘Sri Lankan Tamils’.

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 03 June 2014, 23:28 GMT]“Sri Lanka: The Island of mass graves,” says editorial of Asian Human
Rights Commission’s journal for Feb–April 2014. The editorial by
Nilantha Ilangamuwa traces the ‘mass grave’ statecraft of ‘Sri Lanka’
since early 1970s. Generalisation of the mass graves and equating them
with labels such as JVP and LTTE, is fundamentally misleading, and would
not resolve the issue of State in the island, as the former was state
terrorism’s response to a political question and the latter was naked
genocide to respond to a national question, to which even the JVP was a
party. The Tamil graves are largely not LTTE graves, but graves of
ordinary members of a nation. If there is anything common that all in
the island have to denounce, that is the very ‘Sri Lanka’ state
identity, commented Tamil activists for alternative politics.

The identity ‘Sri Lanka’ has no historicity in the island, other than
the shameful fact that introduced in 1972, it has become a contemporary
history symbol of state terrorism, militarism, mass graves and finally
genocide cum on-going genocide, not only in the island perspective, but
also in global perspective.

‘Sri Lanka’ State concept and
identity was ‘constitutionalised’ on 22 May 1972, following the massacre
of thousands of Sinhala JVP activists in April 1971. ‘Sri Lanka’ once
again massacred the JVP in late 1980s. Certain outside Establishments
indirectly helped the ‘Sri Lankan’ State on both the occasions.

The
JVP’s struggle was a Sinhala struggle to change the structure of the
State, but on the national question its stand was no different from that
of the State.

The Tamils democratically denounced the concept
and identity of ‘Sri Lanka’ at its very inception, as evident from the
protests of 1972, KKS by-election of 1975 and general elections of 1977.

Disappointed by the State as well as by the rebel movement that
came from the Sinhala nation, the Tamil militant struggle to create an
alternative State for the Eezham Tamil nation followed later.

The
Tamil struggle had to face the gravest genocide in recent human
history, and faces on-going genocide, enacted not only by ‘Sri Lanka’
but also by active participation of leading imperialisms of the world.

The
Tamil mass graves in the island have an explicit international
dimension and generalisation of them in the island is not doing justice.

Generalisation
orientates the issue to mere ‘State reform’, which like the idea of
‘regime change’ doesn’t address the question of the concept and identity
of a congenitally flawed State.

The ‘State reform’ paradigm now
comes from the very international culprits who were grooming and
buttressing the State for decades, who continue to impose its identity,
and who now want particularly its military that was instrumental to all
the mass graves, ultimately to continue the State restructured to suit
their new needs.

Generalisation of mass graves subtly aims at
‘blanket amnesty’ to all the regimes as well as detraction of the
singularity of the question of genocide and on-going genocide
imperialistically experimented on the nation of Eezham Tamils.

If
there is anything common about the mass graves to Sinhalese, Tamils and
all the other peoples in the island, it is the shame associated with
the ‘Sri Lanka’ identity. The symbol, legacy and memories would continue
with that identity.

Denouncing the State and geographical
identity ‘Sri Lanka’ that came in 1972 in mind and usage is symbolically
answering the mass-grave paradigm setters locally and internationally.
There are many other alternative ways to refer to the island
geographically, or in asserting to one’s identity in every walk of life
other than ‘official’ insistences of the Establishments.

Creative
writers, artists and progressive media should come forward to
consciously denounce the ‘Sri Lanka’ identity, without worrying whether
their publications and presentations would find acceptance or the media
would get ‘advertisements’. It is like Mahatma Gandhi’s symbolic
movement for handmade cloth.